The American Civil War is one of the most momentous and controversial periods in American History. Why did the American Civil War occur? The American Civil War was a crisis of growth. Slavery was at the heart of the sectional impasses between the North and the South in 1860, although it was not the singular cause of the American Civil War. The North and the South had their economic sights set in different directions. The Northâ€™s sights were pointed towards growth and industrialization, while the Southâ€™s sights were aimed towards growth agriculturally.

In order for industrialization to flourish it would take a united nation. The nation needed to be well educated, which the North was much further advanced than the South. It takes a nation to set up transportation, such as the building of railroads and the digging of rivers and canals. Southerners did not realize that machines would advance civilization because they could perform the work of ten men. Basically, the southerners were just happy with the way things were, because their slaves did all of their work for them. The cotton gin proved to be a major obstacle to southern industrialization, as slaves were as important and productive as ever and so was cotton. Southern industrialization would have put the slaves in the factories, which did not sit well with slaveholders. It gave slaves more freedom and took some of the control away from slave owners. The chief brake on southern industrialization was not labor, but money. To raise the capital it took to build factories, slaveholders would have had to sell some of their slaves, which they seldom did. It was also felt that successful industrialization could disrupt social relations. As long as cash crops were profiting, southern government remained fair, and the slaves were doing all the work, why change?

The North made them selves out to be crusaders. Sure they thought slavery was wrong, because it we